“Every good athlete can find the flow but it’s what you do with it that makes you great. If you consistently use that state to do the impossible, you get confident in your ability to do the impossible.”
Steven Kostler

This website is basically devoted to exploring the mental aspects of Wing Chun. This is really what we can accomplish on a website. Most of Wing Chun teaching requires in-person contact. The instructor shows you. They watch you try it. They correct over time. Then there is the feel of drills like Chi Sau. But Wing Chun, perhaps more than most fighting technologies, requires a firm grasp of the mental game to achieve competence, let alone excellence. While it is crucial to put in the hours doing the forms and drills, it is just as important to consistently use such mental tools as visualization and to organize and plan your training. All of these tactics taken together can bring us closer and closer to our goal, which to have a combat skill hardwired into our body. At its best, this skill expresses itself as doing the right thing at the right time in combat.

Over the years I’ve been training the significance of the mental game in sports has been gaining in appreciation. Sports psychology has gained respect and so have various other methods to study physical excellence. And it shows, on the fields and courts of our sports, and in the Olympics. Records are broken regularly.

Doing the right thing at the right time effortlessly and with the sort of lightening genius that the body can sometimes manifest (when we get out of the way with our slow, day to day mind) is described as flow, a term coined by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow, according to him, is when you are so “involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

If you’re lucky, you’ve experienced this state in your Wing Chun training. I have here and there, if only all-too briefly. Your skills are suddenly heightened and everything seems easy. Your body seems to do everything “of itself.” Your timing is perfect and effortless. Your body feels relaxed and you have endless reservoirs of energy. But the next time you train, it’s gone!

As some of you might have noticed over the last four month or more, my article writing slowed down to a crawl. This was because of issues behind the scenes, which culminated in my leaving my old job and starting a new job on Jan 3rd. But now I’m slowly getting used to the new job and starting to think about my progress in Wing Chun.

Although its very easy to fall into a situation where you are on automatic pilot in your training, going to the school for your classes and either doing what your Sifu suggests or just doing whatever you feel like and using whatever equipment is open, making real progress in Wing Chun requires planning.

I would suggest sitting down at least every six months with a pen and paper and thinking about where you are, where you want to be, and what you need to work on to get there.

My Sifu told me the secret of his success.

He learned all the forms and the drills in his system and then he started doing them all at least once a week. He did this for quite while! As we all know, Wing Chun has relatively few forms and drills (compared to other systems of Chinese combat).

So for all of us, goal number one should be to learn (fully and correctly) all the forms and drills of the system. And then you really begin. Its like they say in Karate – the Black Belt is just the beginning. In Wing Chun, learning all the forms and drills is our equivalent of a Black Belt. Now you really begin.

We have Siu Lum Tao, Chum Kiu, Biu Gee, the Dummy, the Pole, and the Knives. Then we have the support drills (hitting the wall bag, doing the various hands with turning, the various hands with stepping, plus Chi Sao). Throw in some of the more exotic stuff like table drills and X-stepping and you have the complete package. These drills and forms all work together to develop different skills and attributes and they are cumulative.

And more to the point of your semi-annual review (which is what I’m doing right now, since I slacked off for about six months!), many of the specific drills were designed to correct specific weakness and bad habits. Sifu Wong Shun Leung was known as someone who would often design a drill on the spot when faced with a problem in a student. Is the student leaning over too much? Have the training partner pulls his arms away now and then in Chi Sao so the student who has been leaning forward will stumble when they lose the counter-balance of their partners energy. Or if the student is flinching when struck, have the student close their eyes. Well, Wong probably didn’t invent blind Chi Sao, but you get what I’m saying!

Assess yourself in your review and note what problems your teacher and your Sihings have been pointing out to you. NOTE: It will do you and your ego a lot of good to ask your teacher and your training partners to be brutally honest with you (if they are not already). If you want to improve, you need to work on your weaknesses! It is often hard to see these yourself. This is, in large part, what your teacher is there for – they are standing apart watching you and seeing your flaws and problems. Once you have a list of these, you should pick one (the worst one) and start making that your ONE THING to focus on the most.

If instead, we respond to such pressure or force by first relaxing the muscles and making use of correct structure to maintain the position under stress, it is possible to transmit that pressure through the bones and sinews, as opposed to the muscles, and redirect that force into the ground, avoiding the need for muscular strength.
Sifu David Peterson

Sifu David Peterson (well-known first-generation student of Wong Shun Leung) has published another excellent article in Eric Lilleør’s Wing Chun Illustrated. This one is called “Structure and Relaxation: The ‘Dynamic Duo.'”

“When I’m rolling, I’m always going towards his core and he’s going towards mine, because it I let go, he hits me …
Chi Sau is only a training drill – not fighting. But it gives me an angle of attack to hit my person.”
Sifu John Smith

Another short but sweet demo/instructional video from Sisuk John Smith (Wong Shun Leung 1st generation student) out of Australia.

“”When I emit my power, the ghosts and gods are all afraid.”(attributed to) Dong Haiquan

Dong Haiquan (or Dong Hai Chang) was born in 1813 in the Hebei Province of China. Late in life, possibly in his forties, he travelled south and spent a good deal of time in the mountains. At some point, he joined a sect of Daoism called Quan Zhen (Complete Truth/Reality). This sect used a circular walking meditation. This was to help calm the mind and realize stillness in motion. The method was meant to help the practitioner move toward enlightenment.

Dong Haiquan was “discovered” working in the Imperial Palace. His martial abilities had somehow become supremely developed during his travels. He was able to defeat all comers. He was made the Head of Security and put in charge of training others in martial arts. He started teaching around 1870, when he was in his fifties, and taught until his death in 1882, twelve years later.

This story was told to me by my teacher in this context (don’t blame him if I am remembering this one wrong!) – the thing about Dong Haiquan was that he didn’t teach beginners a new “system.” He took already proficient martial artists and upgraded their skills. He taught them something that made what they were already doing better and my teacher suspected that this special sauce was structure.

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Hi. I'm Steve, a professional researcher. I started learning Wing Chun Kung Fu in 2000. Since then, I've trained with some of the best Wing Chun teachers in the world (including Greg LeBlanc and Gary Lam) and done hundreds of hours of research into fight science. This website contains the best of what I've learned. Contact: [email protected]